Remember Freedom Corp, the folks who own the OC Register?
Yeah, that Freedom Corp, the one that filed for bankruptcy in September. The one that announced Nov. 2 that its 118-year-old East Valley Tribune is going bye-bye at the end of the year. The company that has been forcibly retiring and laying off just about anyone who isn't named Frank Mickadeit.
Well, according to a Nov. 5 story by the Arizona Capitol Times that was based on figures collected from recent bankruptcy filings, even while all these cut-cutting measures were taking place, Freedom executives paid out nearly $3.7 million in bonuses to–you guessed it–themselves. Freedom CEO Scott Flanders took home $1.1 million in the past year, including one “$400,000 bonus just weeks before the company filed bankruptcy.”
What about Register publisher Terry Horne, you ask? He got about $200,000.
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Since that's about one-fifth what Flanders gave himself, apparently the
logic behind this intrepidly avaricious self-reward system is that the
more responsibility you have over the decisions that paved the way for
this company to go down the tubes, the more cash you win.
Don't hold your breath waiting to read any news stories or editorials about this in the Register but you can read the entire report over here.
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).